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arXiv · 1811.10246

A monolithic ASIC demonstrator for the Thin Time-of-Flight PET scanner

Pierpaolo Valerio·Roberto Cardarelli·Giuseppe Iacobucci·Lorenzo Paolozzi·Emanuele Ripiccini·Daiki Hayakawa·Salvatore Bruno·Alessandro Caltabiano·Mehmet Kaynak·Holger Rueker·Marzio Nessi
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Abstract

Time-of-flight measurement is an important advancement in PET scanners to improve image reconstruction with a lower delivered radiation dose. This article describes the monolithic ASIC for the TT-PET project, a novel idea for a high-precision PET scanner for small animals. The chip uses a SiGe Bi-CMOS process for timing measurements, integrating a fully-depleted pixel matrix with a low-power BJT-based front-end per channel, integrated on the same 100 $\mu{} m$ thick die. The target timing resolution is 30 ps RMS for electrons from the conversion of 511 keV photons. A novel synchronization scheme using a patent-pending TDC is used to allow the synchronization of 1.6 million channels across almost 2000 different chips at picosecond-level. A full-featured demonstrator chip with a 3x10 matrix of 500x500 $\mu{} m^{2}$ pixels was produced to validate each block. Its design and experimental results are presented here.

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Pierpaolo Valerio, Roberto Cardarelli, Giuseppe Iacobucci, Lorenzo Paolozzi, Emanuele Ripiccini, Daiki Hayakawa, Salvatore Bruno, Alessandro Caltabiano, Mehmet Kaynak, Holger Rueker, Marzio Nessi. 2018-11-26. A monolithic ASIC demonstrator for the Thin Time-of-Flight PET scanner. https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-0221%2F14%2F07%2Fp07013

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